The Eye of the Chained God Read Free Page A

devastation.
    The destruction could have been worse. When orc hordes had spilled over the Nentir Vale decades before, Fallcrest had been sacked and pillaged, reduced from a thriving city to a frontier town. Its recovery had been slow. Many of its streets still had gaps and tumbled piles of rubble where structures had never been rebuilt—gaps that became natural fire breaks. In a more crowded town or village, entire blocks might have burned in the inferno. In Fallcrest, every third house—or more—had survived the demon-brought flames.
    Which wasn’t to say they were all still occupied. Those townspeople whose homes were still inhabitable soughtout the safety of numbers. And of the buildings that stood in Fallcrest’s lower town, most were as empty as the ruins around them.
    Those in the upper town, where the great bluffs that split Fallcrest formed one side of a strong defensive perimeter, were packed. Crowds spilled out of them and into the streets, finding shelter under tents or in rough shacks built from rubble. The crowds weren’t solely the folk of Fallcrest either. A trickle of refugees from the surrounding areas of the Vale had been arriving since the plague had taken hold, turning into a flood as the demons born of the plague swept across the countryside.
    Common wisdom said isolation was the best defense against a plague—but most plagues didn’t bring nightmare creatures searching out new victims to infect and transform, adding to their own numbers in an expanding wave.

    “More stones here!” called Roghar. “And more mortar, too!”
    Below the growing wall on which the dragonborn stood, townsfolk-turned-laborers leaped to follow the order. Although, Roghar considered on second thought, perhaps “leaped” wasn’t the right word. “Lurched” might be more appropriate, or maybe “struggled.” Six days of combing the ruins, cleaning the streets, and attempting to put a shattered town to rights had left the survivors exhausted. Every face was streaked with sweat and grime. Every step was a dragging shuffle. The euphoriaof victory over the invading plague demons had given way to grim reality.
    One facet of that reality was the need to shore up Fallcrest’s defenses. The wall around the upper town was in good repair but the attack had showed that the roads up the bluffs from the lower town were a weak point. For decades, Fallcrest had depended on the steep ascent to deter enemies, but the plague demons were like no mortal enemy. Fearless and tireless, the steep road meant nothing to them. Some had even clawed their way up the sheer cliff itself. Fallcrest needed a new wall—an internal wall at the brow of the escarpment—and a new gate to hold the top of the road.
    With no special place in the town, no family or home of his own, Roghar had taken on Fallcrest’s need and started working. He’d set aside his sword and armor, commandeered a workforce, and in just a few days, had the rough beginnings of a stout gatehouse in place at the most commonly used road, the stubby wings of a low wall unfurling to either side of it. The other two roads were already sealed off. Fallcrest had provided the material in stout timbers and soot-blackened stones taken from ruined houses or from the old city walls toppled almost a century earlier. If the townsfolk were reluctant to scavenge their broken homes at first, they soon took pride in what rose out of their work and sweat.
    They also found pride, Roghar suspected, in the willingness of a paladin of Bahamut—one of the heroes who had fought off the plague demons—to laboralongside them. When workers were tired, it seemed like there were always fresh ones ready to take their places. For his part, Roghar tried to make sure he was always the first at the walls in the morning and the last to leave when the torches guttered low. He was larger than the largest of the townsfolk, an inspiring figure in burnished bronze, the fine scales of his leathery hide shining as he